15 Products That Make Cooking So Much Better

These helpful gadgets cut down on prep, save space and make your time spent in the kitchen feel so much more fun.

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Amazon.com/Presto

From deciding what to eat to prepping the ingredients to getting dinner to the table on time, there’s a lot that goes into cooking. Thankfully, these fun kitchen gadgets help you whip up any dish like a pro—no matter your skill level.

Picnic-Ready Slow Cooker

This handy cooler-style slow cooker($60) has a flip-up handle that makes taking it from the kitchen to the car to the picnic a breeze. The locking lid has a clear top so you can keep your eye what’s simmering inside, and the front-facing wipe-off whiteboard label is perfect for letting guests know exactly what it is they’re dishing up (like any of these slow-cooker potluck favorites).

Foodie Dice

Can’t figure out what to make for dinner tonight? Foodie Dice($24) is here to help indecisive cooks everywhere! This fun wooden dice set lets you roll to land on a protein, herb, seasonal veggie, grain and cooking ingredient to create up to 186,000 fresh and simple meal combinations. Don’t feel like rolling the dice? Pick from any of these 100 five-ingredient recipes, and you can’t go wrong.

Strawberry Huller

When strawberry season rolls around, you just can’t seem to get enough of their juicy goodness in anything from fresh pies to bright salads. This StemGem strawberry huller($10) makes prepwork a cinch—just insert it in the top, twist and the stem and core are pulled out in an instant. Sweet!

Jalapeno Corer

A little spice is nice, but getting fiery jalapeno juices all over your fingers when prepping your favorite salsa can lead to seriously painful results. This helpful jalapeno corer($8) effortlessly scoops and deseeds the insides of your peppers so you don’t have to get in there and touch the spicy interior. Plus, it leaves the pepper whole (but cored), so making homemade jalapeno poppers just got even more enticing.

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Amazon.com/Norpro

Bacon Press

Bacon is undoubtedly one of life’s greatest pleasures, but when it gets all curled up and fatty on the ends, it can be a real bummer. This bacon press($14) holds down the slices in your skillet to keep those curls at bay, leaving you with uniformly flat, perfectly crisp bacon that’s great on its own, or in any of these ultimate bacon-lovers’ recipes.

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Amazon.com/Mason Cash

Flour-Shaking Rolling Pin

This double-duty rolling pin($27) not only helps you create the smoothest pie crusts and perfect cut-out cookies (its ceramic construction helps keep the dough from sticking), but its hollow core is the perfect place to store extra flour. Need to sprinkle a little more on your pastry mat? Just shake through the holed end and keep on rollin’.

Greens-and-Herbs Stripper

A diet rich in leafy greens is so good for you, but stripping the goodness from the stem can be a stressful chore. This handheld greens stripper($8) has four holes on each side, where you can insert kale, swiss chard, collard greens or woody herbs and simply pull to remove the leaves from the stem. What’s more, the curved side acts as an herb chopper to make quick prepwork with one tool.

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Amazon.com/Drop

Tech-Savvy Scale

At first sight, the Drop Scale($80) looks like any other digital scale on the market, but using its compatible app on your smartphone or tablet transforms it into a brilliant tool for baking and cooking. Simply pull up a recipe, pour in its ingredients, and the app will tell you when to stop, so each ingredient is perfectly measured by weight as you go. It’s the foolproof answering to whipping up nearly anything in your kitchen, but is a true game-changer when baking, where measuring flour by weight is best practice.

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If it were nutritionally and socially acceptable, Rachel could subsist on mac ’n’ cheese alone. When she’s not writing or editing, she loves yoga, running, biking and listening to comedy and true crime podcasts.